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Donkey Kong Country Returns

Retro Studios president and CEO Michael Kelbaugh commented on Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze’s new 3D camera and how the Metroid Prime games influenced the company’s Donkey Kong titles as part of an interview with GamesTM this month. In doing so, Kelbaugh revealed that Metroid Prime’s engine and tools were used to make Returns.

Kelbaugh told the magazine:

With every game we make, we get better. In that sense, yes, the experience we gained working on the Metroid Prime franchise was invaluable.

Specifically answering your question about 3D to 2D, what you may not realise is that we constructed the levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze in very much the same manner as we did the levels in Metroid Prime. However, levels in Returns and Tropical Freeze are much, much larger and more detailed. And I’ll share this with you; we used the Metroid Prime engine and tools to develop Returns, so technically, the lessons learned on Metroid Prime were directly applied.


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